Supervisors: Dr. Susan Waldron, University of Glasgow and Prof. David Gilvear, University of Stirling
PhD Student: Ben Smith, University of Glasgow
Status: Closed
Thus, here we outline a studentship will use construction of a windfarm to assess environmental impact, so informing future best practice and guiding habitat management plans, and contribute to generating the data required to refinde the Scottish Government carbon calculator, a tool developed to be used in planning applications to assess payback times (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2008/06/25114657/9).
The proposed studentship comprises a series of research packages outlined below. The field site will be SSER Gordonbush Windfarm near Brora, where construction is due to start in July 2010.
Proposed activities:
1. Assess natural varation in landscape C and sediment export within which export associated with disturbance can be contextualised. Sediment cores will be collected from i) a lake deposit that accumulated behind a now disused hydroelectric dam on the main river that will drain the windfarm and ii) from the depositional delta in Loch Brora which represents sedimentation over the period pre-construction of the dam. Cores will be analysed for carbon content, total phosphorus concentration and diatom communities allowing paleoenvironmental reconstruction of catchment characteristics pre-windfam and possibly pre-afforestation. A second set of cores collected in July 2012 and similarly characterised will be used to assess if there is a measurable impact from the windfarm construction activities in the intervening period. Resources are required for core collection, analysis, dating of the sediments to provide historic context and sedimentation rates.
2. Analyse monthly water samples manually collected at seven development sites and one control site for total suspended solids, dissolved and particulate organic carbon and total phosphorus. This sampling would commence in July 2010 and continue for 3 years allowing, time to assess potential impact and recovery post commissioning of the windfarm.
3. Supplement the monthly water sample analysis with automated storm event sampling to fully characterise the range of nutrient export over the full hydrological regime. Over the course of the first two years of the project we propose to target two events from each season at sites 1 and 6 using automatic water samplers. Storm event flow is the key mechanism for export of carbon, nutrients and sediment, but is often not included as routine sampling does not coincide with event flow, so incorporation here represents rigorous research protocol.
4. Construct total export budgets by integrating the monthly profiling and storm event sampling with discharge. This data will be used to estimating a g C / m2 catchment export, the parameter to which windfarm payback time calculators are most sensitive, but have little information to inform them.
5. Install of dipwells and piezometers in undisturbed and disturbed peat areas and seasonal sampling of soil water. This will shed light on carbon mobilisation at source and can be used to inform drainage carbon and nutrient loss profiles.
6. Construct a digitial elevation model that incorporates peat depth data collected by the construction company to estimate peat and carbon reserves. This will allow aqueous carbon losses to be linked to peat depths in sub-catchments and impacts on the total carbon store.
7. Core of three peat cores within the wind turbine locations and subsequent dating of the core to produce C sequestration rates. Items 4, 5 and 6 can be used to better understand the balance between carbon sequestration and aquatic C losses.
8. Undertake smaller process-based studies such as whether ditch-blocking beneficially reduced aquatic C export.